


Watch

by anexorcist



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anexorcist/pseuds/anexorcist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s deserved a break for a long time, but not like this. He never wanted it like <i>this</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartslogos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/gifts).



> For Hearts' prompt "watch"

Tim doesn’t watch the news anymore because he doesn’t want to know anymore secrets. Because he sees Janet and Jack in every overseas kidnapping. Because he sees stolen dreams and betrayal in every Batman and Robin exposé.

Sees the family that went far, far away because they didn’t love him enough and the family that sent  _him_  away instead because they claimed to love him  _too_ much.

Tim doesn’t watch television anymore because when it’s time to turn it off and go to bed, he’s faced with his reflection - broken and tired and he can’t decide if it looks empty and blank or like he’s feeling entirely too much.

Like he had nothing else to do one day, so he swallowed the world whole and it just sits inside of him, mountaintops scratching the underside of skin and muscles, scraping against bone. Oceans overflowing and crashing against his rib cage, filling his lungs. Molten cores expanding and wild jungles multiplying rampantly, like some kind of disease.

The natural disasters on TV, and the human ones, too, become a reflection of his insides, and Tim can’t bear to watch anymore. He’s sick and he knows it, he doesn’t need anyone else, least of all strangers, least of all  _family_ , telling him.

Everything the news has to offer, Tim already knows because it’s happening inside of him, all at the same time. And it’s so heavy he can’t breathe anymore.

Tim doesn’t watch television anymore because the face that stares back, the black of his hair, the blue of his eyes - they remind him too much of other black-haired, blue-eyed men (and boys), ones he doesn’t want to think about at all but hopes are thinking about him this very moment and how they failed him.

He doubts it. Because The Mission has always come first. Something else has  _always_  come first. (But never Tim, no, not Tim.)

Just like with the television and the news, Tim doesn’t even like to watch out his window anymore, for that bright blur of red and yellow or those shadows that run deeper than the rest, like the bottom of the ocean, or the heart of a cave deep beneath another empty house, or like Gotham itself.

The flash of gunfire and the reflection off a red helmet makes his empty stomach roil, and the spinning black and red from a quadruple somersault makes his even emptier chest heave.

Tim doesn’t watch out the windows because it reminds him of all the things he’s outgrown - scuttling along fire escapes and ducking behind air conditioning vents, cameras and secrecy and trust and loyalty and another person’s hand ruffling his hair. He’s grown too big and too tired for those kinds of things. Lost the will, the energy, the spirit, the drive that means he’s  _alive_  and not just living.

(Another thing Tim doesn’t watch is his weight. Or the number of meals he’s supposed to be eating every day. He doesn’t watch anything except for memories and dreams and useless wishes flashing behind his eyelids, and that’s only because he can’t help it.)

He doesn’t watch his comm’s battery life die and he certainly doesn’t watch the flashing red light and the number rising on his answering machine (messages from Dick, sometimes Alfred, because no one else calls, they’re all happy or better off or six feet in the ground, and sometimes, those all equate to the same thing, in Tim’s mind).

And even Dick will stop calling, one day. So Tim stops watching, stops trying. He’s tired. Of the waiting. Of the wondering. Of the let downs and betrayals. He’s  _tired_.

So instead of watching, Tim just crawls under the covers.

And he sleeps.


End file.
